I had a wonderful presentation of the Galilee Flowers in the British Parliament; also, the Pardes made its appearance in French and can be bought in the same places where L'Autre Visage was sold. Now I also receieved a good amount of copies of Galilee Flowers, and can send them to you directly. Please write if interested. Below is the talk I gave in London:

Jews and the Empire

By Israel Shamir

(A Talk given in the House of Lords, Westminster, on February 23, 2005)

Ladies and Lords, Gentlemen, Friends,

It is a great honour for this small writer from far-away Jaffa to speak to you in this ancient abode of democracy and aristocracy intertwined, and I wish to thank my host tonight, my dear brother, his lordship Nazir Ahmed of Rotherham in the heather-bound Yorkshire. I would give much to have another dear friend present here, the late Sir Robin, Lord Phillimore for much of my love and understanding of England is due to this friendship. I was but a pup, a young journalist, who came to work at your renowned BBC, and the Lord Phillimore was my bridge and my guide to the good old England of Pickwick Papers, for his home stood in this most English swat of land near Henley-on-Thames. Thus England became a love of my youth, England of pubs serving Brakespear Old Fashioned ale, of neat green squares of Kensington where I lived, of milk bottles on doorstep, of the punchy smell of bacon-and-eggs and burned toast in the morning, of the pleasant feel of the Guardian pages, of the calm bonhomie of English people, of your lovely maidens who are able to propose and prepare a nice cup of tea in the least suitable moment, of your men with their fair play, the green sweet and somewhat parochial England of Blake, Hopkins, Waugh and G K Chesterton, England as opposed to the Empire.

Much as I love England I came to dislike the Empire. The Empire was a vile 19th century invention. The Empire ruined Iraq and used poison gases against its citizens long before the present Bush-and Blair offensive. No land was too far or too near to be safe from the Imperial assaults: from Shimonoseki in South of Japan to Gondor in mountains of Ethiopia, from Beijing to Archangelsk, from the fishermen’ city of Oriente in Brittany to Baghdad, from Dublin to Kandagar, from Dresden in Saxony to Akka in Palestine, the Empire bombed them all. And I do not speak of some long gone days of Queen Anne, but of last hundred fifty years since the fateful accent of your first Zionist ruler, Lord Beaconsfield.

In our country, in Palestine, much of present sorrows are result of the Imperial intervention. The first Intifada, the great Arab revolt of 1936-1939, caused by the creeping Zionist takeover, was crushed by the Imperial forces with great severity. Thousands of native Palestinians were killed, executed, hanged, expelled from their land. The Arab defeat, al-Nakba of 1948 can't be understood without the context of the previous Imperial war against the Palestinians. The Zionist armies administered the coup-de-grace to the disarmed, bleeding, powerless rural population whose elite and best fighters were eliminated by the Empire.

Oh, you say, why should we remember it now? We can't let bygones be bygones for the Empire is not a thing of past. Like a monstrous parasite it migrated after sucking the juice of the Brits. Its capital was relocated to Washington and New York, while England remained a subservient part of Empire, a Greece to the New Rome, or rather a Tyre to the new Carthage. Not only your RAF assists the Americans, but your BBC, once a paragon of objectivity, became a propaganda tool for the New Empire.

I did not come to condemn you but to offer my condolences, for England is one of the Imperial victims. I came first time to your land some thirty years ago, and since then the Empire eats you up as much as it eats everybody else. London became a faceless cosmopolitan city, your cinema is destroyed, your streets are taken by international chains of shops, your newspapers belong to Zionists, and there is a danger the English will be turned into human dust by the Imperial burden as the Romans and Macedonians of old, to be followed by the Americans.

The Empire is not particularly good for people, including the people of the mother country. Let us consider Palestine. Thousands of young British men died in order to conquer Palestine and give it to the Jews. They committed many atrocities, killed a lot of natives, and enforced Jewish supremacy in Palestine. They received no gratitude. Elder people maybe remember the subsequent Zionist terrorist attacks on the British troops, the assassination of Lord Moyne, maybe they remember the two British sergeants who were kidnapped and hanged by the Jews, and their dead bodies were defiled, booby-trapped by the killers. Menachem Begin, our late Prime Minister, was particularly proud of it. Younger people won't even know it, for your media, the mind and the nervous system of the nation, is hijacked by Zionists like Conrad Black and Murdock, and they won't allow this knowledge to be remembered.

But it is vital to remember, for the new empire continues the ways of the old. Now in Iraq, the US and its British dependency continue the same old fight for ensuring Jewish supremacy in the Middle East, for England – or even English business – has no need to be in Baghdad and Basra. Indeed, in the Middle East we have just one reason for wars, terror and trouble – and that is Jewish supremacy drive. In our country, Israel or Palestine, we can have peace today, if we were to agree to equality of Jew and non-Jew. But this principle, so carefully observed in Europe, is anathema to the Jews in Israel. Like in England before the reforms of 1832, your predecessors would not agree to equality of a lord and a commoner before the law; or in Rhodesia of Ian Smith, the white settlers did not want to be equal with the blacks.

Well, so Jews do not want to be equal. But why should you assist them in their pursuit of supremacy? There is an American joke [of Jay Leno]: "If God doesn't destroy Hollywood Boulevard, he owes Sodom and Gomorrah an apology." Indeed, if England keeps supporting the apartheid Jewish state, it owes an apology to Rhodesia and South Africa. Why, indeed, it does? This is not a rhetoric question. Why the New Empire went to war, committed itself to the vast expenses and dangers, antagonised bigger part of the world – and all that in the interests of Jewish supremacy?

In my book – that is the one I came to promote – I try to explain why the Jews have a special place in the Imperial conscience. Superficially, one can explain it by personalities, by the special position of the Neo-cons in Washington and of the Jewish media-lords in the US and elsewhere. Jews indeed own, control and edit a big share of mass media, this mainstay of Imperial thinking; just last month a Rothschild bought the French daily Liberacion, and an Israeli citizen bought a TV 4 channel in Sweden. This is a valid observation, but not sufficient.

The New Empire, even more than the old one, is infused with Judaic values on an ideological and theological level. This is the thing I try to deal with, because preoccupation with ethnic or religious origins of a person is not only improper but often misleading. Indeed, the strongest enemies of the Judaic values are often people of Jewish origin. Allow me to mention St Paul, Karl Marx and Simone Weil to make my point clear. Another example can be provided by Sir Carl Popper, a colleague of yours who referred to the Judaic concept of chosen-ness as ‘vile’. He also rejected an approach of a Jewish Year Book to have him included, for he said, he does not believe in race and has nothing to do with Jewish faith or values – despite his Jewish origin. Do not concentrate on ethnics, look for ideology. In your case, Michael Howard is less Judaic than Tony Blair, for the first objects to removal of British liberties and to sweeping anti-Muslim legislation, while the second brought this country into the Iraqi war for Israeli interests.

While a Judaic tendency is just an ideological tendency, a special feeling towards Jews is a symptom of certain pro-Imperial predisposition. For instance, Tony Blair is a great supporter of the Empire. But even if we would not know that, we would be able to guess: for he expressed unlimited support of the Jewish state. The Jewish state is the country where a Jew has more rights than a non-Jew. Three to four million of our native residents have neither right of vote nor citizenship rights for a single fault: they are not Jews. Do not forget, Rhodesia was dismantled for the equal sin of ethnic or racial supremacy.

This feeling that ‘Jews are special’ found now its _expression in the story of Ken Livingstone and his sin coming hard on the heels of Prince Harry and his mishap. Actually, I have heard that at the next costume ball, Prince Harry will be dressed as Ken Livingstone. The Ken's story is simple: the Mayor was rude to a hack. Being a journalist, I sympathise with the journalist; but being rude to is our professional hazard. However, the insult was blown well over normal proportions. If Ken would be equally insulting to a member of Royal family, he will be forgiven if not encouraged. But here – even the Students’ Union decided to ban Ken.

Your anti-racist feelings do not come into it. Some time ago I watched the Hard Talk with Tim Sebastian on the BBC. Tim was grilling a Uganda Asian businessman living in England. He told him: well, you Asians in Uganda were heavily engaged in the black market activities, smuggled hard currency abroad, despised the natives and refused to marry them. Actually the same accusations were traditionally levelled against Jews. If Tim would just try to say it to a Jew he would be kicked out of his job same day. But applied to the Muslims – they did not cause a stir. It was just a Hard Talk. So it is not ‘anti-racism’. In my view, this unbelievable out-of-proportion response to Ken's affair shows again a mysterious connection of Jews and the new Empire.

One reason is that Jews like an Empire. If there is a choice between an England and an Empire, the Jews prefer an Empire. Benjamin Ginsberg, the Professor of Political Science at John Hopkins University, wrote a book on this subject, called Jews and the State: The Fatal Embrace and he attests to this Jewish love of Empire. Any Empire: Franz Josef, the last Emperor of Austro-Hungarian Empire, used to say that Jews are the most loyal of his subjects. In your country, Disraeli was equally proud of his Jewish ancestry and devoted to the Empire-building.

A Jewish joke tells of two Jewish brothers in revolutionary Odessa; one of them emigrated to England and became a peer of the realm, another one remained in Russia, suffered as much as anybody, and eventually the Russian brother was invited by his British brother to London. The brother arrived, received English citizenship, had whale of time, went to Covent Garden, maybe to the Palace, at night the brothers come home, and the Russian brother began to cry. “Oh do not cry, told him the English brother, you had your life, I had mine, it could happen other way around.” “You did not understand me, - says the Russian brother, - I weep for India we have lost”.

This love of Empire explains the easiness Jews change their allegiance – indeed, the same people who were all for the Russian or French or British Empire now became ardent supporters on the new American Empire. Simple minds call it ‘treacherous behaviour’, but it is actually love of Empire per se, and it does not matter who is the titular head of this Empire: Jews are good for an Empire, as long as they feel the Empire is good for them.

Now, there is a large and thriving Muslim community in England. In my view, Islam is a form of Christianity, even nearer to the Nicene Creed than some Pentecostals or other American denominations. What is more important, they are now on the side of freedom, against the Empire, and they are not afraid of enforcers of Judaic values, Jewish or Gentile. This community is very important in order to turn the tide. Let us hope that its introduction will be important for England's future.

This is the right time to overcome left-right divide: if Michael Howard stands on the right –for liberties - and Blair stands on the left – and for anti-Muslim legislation, for police control and for war, the terms have little relevance today. There are friends and enemies of the Empire in all your major political parties, and equally all the parties are Zionist-infiltrated. There is a need for new realignment in order to unite anti-Imperial forces for full withdrawal of British troops from overseas, for independence of England from the American Empire.

In the Apple Cart by Bernard Shaw, the US makes a bid to take over England, and a wise monarch keeps its independence. Disentanglement of England from the US embrace is much needed, an answer to the Boston Tea Party is called for.

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_________________You will know you have spoken the truth when you are angrily denounced; and you will know you have spoken both truly and well when you are visited by the thought police.